Bejeweled 3

Details

The biggest, brightest Bejeweled ever! Discover all-new ways to play the world’s #1 puzzle game. Find your perfect match with 8 breathtaking game modes that meet all your moods — ease into Classic Bejeweled for cascades of fun, journey through 40 challenging Quest puzzles, charge into the electrifying Lightning for non-stop action, and tailor your experience in Zen for a revolutionary new way to relax. Enjoy the amazing sights and sounds and engage in endless gem-matching fun, and earn flashy achievement badges as you soar to dazzling new heights!

Modes, lots of modes

How do you go about 1uping yourself, as Popcap dazzled everyone with the perfect match 3 jeweled puzzle game Bejeweled 2? You build off that winning formula with innovative content and lots of it. Bejeweled 3 is packed with content. As for that content, there are 4 main game modes.

You get the true classic mode, old school gameplay you know and love, a new Lightning mode, a frantic fast paced challenge against the clock, Zen mode, an infinite board where you can do whatever you want without worrying about running out of moves (often a great place to strengthen your swapping gems to generate hyper cubes or flame gems skills), and a new Quest mode, which sees you completing varying objectives and mini-games to get to that holy 100% status.

Yet they're not done there as Popcap has also added the ability for the player to unlock four more secret game modes. In short they are Poker, Butterfly, Ice storm and my favorite Diamond Mine. You'll be swapping gems to create poker hands in Poker, trying to collect all the movable gems (butterflies) before they reach the top of the board (where a venomous spider would be lurking) in Butterfly, frantically trying to match gems vertically to stop the rising ice columns in Ice Storm and digging through miles of dirt to reap treasure and gems in Diamond Mine.

Considering Popcap released this same game on PC before for their usual $20 price point, picking this up on the 360 at $15 is a real bargain. Aside from all the game modes available there are also a plethora of stats and badges to accumulate. Say you blew up 50 flame gems, there you go you get a bronze badge for that completed objective. This is Popcap's in-game achievement system and it can help make you want to try or play that one game mode one more time. It adds to the drive to do great, something you'd find in any Popcap game that relates to high scores. Recommend

Bejeweled Blitz 3

Although, this entry into the series is better than the first for XBLA, I really find it hard to justify giving this game a good rating. Although I love the Bejeweled series, I just can't get into the game on the xbox.

On the pc, you click on both jewels and they switch. The xbox controls are a little different. Here you click on the jewel you want to move and then use the direction pad to move it. That, coupled with the fact that you must use rapid eye movement to figure out where you're going next makes this game difficult at best on the xbox.

Not nearly as fast as using a mouse it makes it hard to get a good score on the game. This can pose a series problem for achievement hunters as games like this can really put a dent in someone's completed games list.

Overall, I would say if you like the series and just want to sit there banging away at jewels, go ahead and get the game. However, as it is right now I don't believe it is worth 1200 points. I think it would be better value at half that at least.